


Chemical Warfare

by Jaydee_Faire



Category: DC Animated Universe
Genre: Fun with Joker Venom, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, OC with a baseball bat, Overdose, PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-24 06:26:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13207899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaydee_Faire/pseuds/Jaydee_Faire
Summary: Item one: I'd taken a lungful of Joker venom and gone down hard.Item two: I am not, currently, dead. Probably.





	Chemical Warfare

**Author's Note:**

> I had a DC OC and wrote a ficlet featuring him, once. Backstory what's that
> 
> Unfortunately I can't pretend that I can write Nightwing in character.

It flares up in a mist, and, like a complete moron, I gasp in a startled breath. It stabs deep into my lungs, and though it comes right back out as a series of choking coughs, the damage is done. Even as I jab my fingers into the man’s throat, I can feel my stomach cramping, my mouth stretching into a manic grin.

Fuck.

_Fuck!_

Two more of them go down as my legs start to tense, and I’ve dropped a third man by the time the first giggle claws its way up my throat. I double over, clapping a hand over my mouth, trying to keep my body steady, trying to keep eyes on the remaining thugs. There are seven of them. I have, at most, thirty seconds before I’ll be laughing too hard to breathe.

God dammit, it’s the Joker that carries the Joker Venom, not some random clown-faced thug lifting chemicals out of a warehouse!

_It’s a trap,_ I think, then, _no, I’m just being careless._

Doesn’t matter. In another twenty-two seconds, nothing’s going to matter. I have an antidote in my belt. I’ll have to find the right vial, a tiny little thing the size of a battery, slot it into the syringe gun that’s in a different pouch, put it against my arm and pull the trigger. It’d be simple to do if my hands hadn’t already curled into shaking fists, if my muscles hadn’t already stopped taking orders from my brain.

My thighs jerk, sending me hard on my knees and then over onto my side. I’m laughing and the thugs are laughing with me, growing blurrier as my eyes water and my vision darkens from lack of oxygen. After too long, I finally manage to suck in a wheezing breath. It whooshes back out of me when my stomach cramps again, feeling as if someone’s punched me in the gut. My thighs tense again, shoulders join them, and I curl into a shaking, laughing ball.

I can still just barely make out the white-painted face of the nearest thug. If I could close my eyes, I would, but the venom’s taken that option away from me. So I stare up at him, dizzy, grinning, and watch as his face caves in around the baseball bat that’s swung into it. It’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen, immediately replaced by the sight of him gurgling and clawing at the white splinters of bone where his nose and right eye used to be. I laugh as he falls, laugh as I listen to the thud, crunch, splat all around me. Someone falls heavily across me, pushing out my last precious reserve of air, and my laughter is reduced to a pained, desperate wheezing.

Hands are scrabbling at my belt. No, no, I need that. Please. Stop. The cramping in my stomach is agony. My lungs are screaming for air. A hand lifts my chin, pulls my collar down, and all I can think of is _not the neck, not the neck, it goes in the arm!_ Before a sharp pinch against my throat sends me down into blessed stillness.

-

My back is up against a wall. My chest and face ache. My arm is around someone’s shoulders. I turn to look, only to find that my eyes are closed and I’m too tired to open them. One of my gauntlets is pulled off—night air rushes in to chill my fingertips—and I feel eyes, a mouth, a broken nose and a familiar pattern of scars.

“John?” My lips feel loose, stretched.

“Mm.”

I’m pulled to my feet again. I don’t think I can walk. I decide I should say so; it would be the polite thing to do. I pass out.

-

I think my feet are moving underneath me, but I’m not sure. I lift my head a little, and in response, Johnny sets my hand to his face again, kisses my fingers. He pulls me forward. I lean on him, too heavily, feel him straining to take my weight.

-

I’m on my back again. Hands are reaching up underneath my chin, undoing the clasp at my collar, unzipping my uniform. I would care about that if I had the energy to do anything but lay still and breathe. But I must have made some kind of sound, because again my hand is lifted, and again I feel the deep cut of the scar across Johnny’s nose. He releases my hand, peels my uniform off of me. I realize how hard I’d been sweating, how cold it is now. My shivering turns into shaking, and then Johnny is laying across me, trying to keep me still as I convulse. My stomach cramps again— _no, no please no_ —and I am turned onto my side just as I retch weakly.

-

There is a crease in the sheet underneath me, and I can feel it as sharply as if it were made of steel instead of cotton. Warmth touches my nose and mouth, draws away, comes back to my eyes. It happens again, then a third time. I realize it’s Johnny again as he drips cold water onto my lips. I can just barely move my tongue enough to swallow.

-

I’m shaking again. Johnny’s hands push me onto my side, his skinny body presses against my back. His arms wind around my waist and he kisses my shoulder.

-

The sheets are warm. They smell good, a clean smell. I lay still for a long time before I realize that my sweat no longer smells sour and rotten. Another time of stillness. My body aches, but I think I can move. I wriggle my arms underneath myself and sit up as much as I can, gritting my teeth against the pain.

I’m in my bedroom, in my bed. It’s sometime before dawn, maybe an hour before sunrise. My uniform’s been stripped off of me and I’m laying naked among a nest of freshly cleaned sheets.

What…

_Don’t just wonder. Put together what you know._

Item One: I’d taken a lungful of Joker Venom and gone down hard.

Item Two: I am not, currently, dead. Probably.

I lay listening to the first cautious calls of birds outside the window, trying to connect the muzzy memories between then and now, trying to put them in order. The baseball bat. The antidote against my neck. The scarred face—Johnny. There’s no way I could have walked from the river to my apartment in my condition. I wonder if Johnny had carried me, remember how small he is, then wonder how the hell else he got me here.

More memories bob to the surface: Johnny pulling off my uniform, wiping my face, dripping water into my mouth. Holding onto me though the seizures. You weren’t supposed to hold down seizure victims, but I can’t imagine having to go through it again without his steady hands on me.

I roll over onto my side, somehow make my fingers close around a cup of water on the nightstand, drink thirstily. I am just setting the empty cup back down when I hear the door close. Footsteps, a sigh. A shadow appears in the doorway, pauses, then rushes over to my side. Johnny’s mouth is on mine before I can even say hello.

“Sorry if I worried you,” I say when he finally releases me. He makes a face that plainly tells me what he thinks of me spouting clichés. “Sorry I made you drag me all the way home, then,” I amend. “Have I been out all night?”

Johnny shakes his head. I glance at the graying sky outside the window, then back at him. “But it’s…” it takes me a moment to remember the way Johnny answers questions. “…I’ve been out longer than a night.” A nod. “Longer than two nights?” Another nod. Panic begins to unfold in my gut. “Johnny—“

“Week,” Johnny says. “Sis’days.”

An outburst is only going to startle him. I fight to stay calm, thinking of calls for help going unanswered, psychopaths running the streets unchecked. I’m not the only one keeping Gotham safe, but we’re a team, a net, and a hole as big as the one I’ve left will have let a lot of things through.

“Stop worrying,” Johnny says. “M’wanted to let you sleep.”

I glance up at him. “You—“

“Gordon… doesn’t like me. But I told him. You were sleeping. So.” He shrugs.

“You went out _as_ me? For a week?”

“I didn’t wear your clothes,” he says, as if that makes it any less ridiculous. Then he admits, “Had help.”

I feel dizzy; I put a hand over my eyes, trying not to imagine what Johnny trying his hand as an actual crimefighter had been like. “Who helped you? Tim—the thin one?”

“No.”

“Small, fast?” Damian only had a loose idea of who Johnny was, but was smart enough to connect the two of us.

“No.”

“The girl?” I shudder at the thought of Barbara trying to rein in Johnny’s bloodthirstiness.

“No.”

There are too many candidates, and not enough at the same time. “Who, then?”

Johnny puts both hands over his face, pulls them quickly down to indicate a full-face mask. A pit opens up in my stomach. _“Jason?”_ It almost made a twisted sort of sense. I wonder if the Joker Venom is still affecting my brain.

“Mm.”

“How did you—why did—“

“Told him. You’re sleeping. He said okay. He came with me. Showed me.” Johnny looks down at his hands. “Okay with… not talking. Okay with me. Nice,” he finishes.

“Jason was _nice_ to you,” I say flatly.

“Mm.” He keeps his eyes away from mine, and I remember that his presence is, at most, tolerated by the other crimefighters in Gotham, and for the most part only because they know he works with me. I can’t imagine what kind of treatment he’d gotten while I wasn’t there to justify his presence. I’m suddenly, stupidly grateful to _Jason Todd_ of all people for not treating Johnny like a freak.

Then again, now I feel like I owe him a favor, which is a precarious position to be in. Johnny stops me from following that thought too far by kissing my cheek. “Brought you. Eat,” he says, and I notice for the first time the plastic bag at his feet, stuffed with foil-wrapped burritos.

“You went to Freebirds?” I’m suddenly starving; I wonder what, if anything, Johnny has gotten me to eat in the past week. “I can’t believe you remembered how much I—“ the end of the sentence sticks in my throat. “… Johnny, the nearest Freebirds is in Metropolis.”

“Mm.” Johnny shrugs.

“You went to _Metropolis?_ There’s no way you—“

“Had help,” Johnny says smugly.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been collecting older fics to archive them here. This one went up on Tumblr about three years ago.


End file.
